Europe had human zoos in 1958 | Hacker News Reader

Europe had human zoos in 1958

theplaidzebra.com

12 pointsbabuskov8 comments

This is a sad and impossible to justify action, but I think we haven't improved yet. Outside of preserving species, animal zoos we have now are, in my view, equally wrong and unjustifiable. The recent death of a kid in a zoo showed how irresponsible humans are with their dominion over most things on this earth. In the opposite scenario we wouldn't shoot a human baby that's trying to, say, eat a bird, would we? I've heard most arguments for zoos and the only one that makes sense is to help the population of species. Anything else like "but this reduces safaris" are bogus.

To give the simplest possible example: what gives us the right to cage a bird and disallow it from flying, which arguably is its primary purpose in life?

To be clear, I'm not following any pro animal rights, or against meat or whatever ideology. I just cannot logically make sense of holding animals in captivity with the sole purpose of having humans visit them. There are good ways to do this as well, like reservations in the open nature, where it's not a zoo, but still it's a compromise and ideally we wouldn't have to fence lions, etc. in because human settlements have expanded into their space.

If you think zoos exist for "holding animals in captivity with the sole purpose of having humans visit them" then you don't understand how zoos work. There's a lot more going on beyond the scene. Zoos employ numerous Ph.D-level scientists who are involved in conservation work. Many more animals would be extinct today without the breeding programs in zoos.

Maybe you missed the exceptions I've included above:

    Outside of preserving species, animal zoos we have now are...

    ...only one that makes sense is to help the population of species...

Maybe my wording was bad, but your argument is exactly what I accept as a valid reason for zoos to exist.

I generally agree with you. How do you feel about domesticated animals as pets, like cats, dogs, fish, etc? Or farming animals like chickens and cattle?

Some animals are domesticated in ways that they wouldn't survive without humans, and there are species which are held just for the amusement of humans like a fish in a home aquarium. Chickens and cattle are special because they're predominantly single purpose branches of the original species and would most likely not survive in the wild. Dogs and cats can survive, and there are different breeds of those which have a higher or much lower chance of survival.

The absurdity comes in with dog species that were bred to be small or look a certain way and are riddled with diseases or low survival chances on their own. The same kind of dog breed wouldn't survive in nature and propagate, but we believe it's acceptable to breed tiny dogs for purses or mean looking terriers that have genetic disadvantages leading to life-long ailments.

This may sound controversial, but before we protest the farming of animals whose single purpose is making furry clothes or food for humans, where those animals (like cattle, fish) wouldn't exist otherwise, we might want to fix the cruelty that's going on in some parts of the pet industry first.

To answer your question, yes, most domestication of fish falls into the same unnatural cruel captivation like caging birds, but most cat and dog domestication evolved naturally. One has to recall that domestic dogs are the result of selective breeding human friendly branches through ages. Even with those, we have dogs like German shepherd that have built-in physical conditions which are unlikely to have existed with human-intervention-free natural selection.

With all that being said, some instances of us trying to preserve species which leads to survival only under human controlled institutions, is probably more to appease the guilt of humans having done things which led to their extinction. If there's no reasonable chance of, say, releasing a panda into the wilderness, then I'm afraid it's only for preserving fresh genetic material and reducing humanity's feeling of guilt. If we were serious about all of it, we would take measures to not invade on their homes, but look at LA, where wild cats visit parts of the LA hills settlements or bears in Alaska or Canada or boars in Europe. We rule the geography and want to build cities in all kinds of places all the while trying to preserve the population of fauna and flora. Something has to give if we keep using the same mechanisms.

Saying "a Congolese female" in this context seems inappropriate. "Woman" would be a more humanizing term.

(Also, the rest of the article seems to suggest Ota Benga was a man, not a woman. My point still stands.)

Society is a human zoo.

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